Going back over some of my older photos I came across this golden orb weaver but the background was unusually green and lush. I usually associate golden orb weavers with the arid Australian outback so what confused me for a while is that I was expecting to see muted browns as I was sure this image was taken in the Flinders Ranges.<\/p>\n
Going back over dates and travels I soon discovered I’d taken this image in the tropical lushness of a Tongan forest. With that realisation I was taken back to that particular day and how almost every walkway through that forest was barricaded by web after web after web of these giant spiders.<\/p>\n
To say the least this experience triggered my old arachnophobia but at least the chance to photograph these amazing creatures went a long way to quell that innate fear.<\/p>\n
Tongan Giant Spider, Nephila tetragnathoides<\/em><\/p>\n Photo: Robert Rath, ‘The Golden Orb Weaver’ 1\/250s f\/4.5 ISO100 200mm<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Going back over some of my older photos I came across this golden orb weaver but the background was unusually green and lush. I usually associate golden orb weavers with the arid Australian outback so what confused me for a while is that I was expecting to see muted browns as I was sure this […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7896,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[83,259,788,465,2459,78,64,1641,1642,62],"class_list":["post-7895","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-arachnid","tag-critters","tag-goldenorbweaver","tag-nature","tag-nephilatetragnathoides","tag-spiders","tag-spiderweb","tag-tonga","tag-vavau","tag-web"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wetshutter.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7895","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wetshutter.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wetshutter.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wetshutter.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wetshutter.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7895"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wetshutter.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7895\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7897,"href":"https:\/\/wetshutter.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7895\/revisions\/7897"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wetshutter.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7896"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wetshutter.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7895"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wetshutter.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7895"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wetshutter.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7895"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}